A lawsuit over who is to blame for the death of an Oahu toddler has lasted far longer than the abused boy’s short, painful life. Now that the state has lost an intermediate appeal in the case, it should accept the verdict and apply the lessons learned, rather than continuing to argue that the Department of Human Services bears no responsibility.

Brayden McVeigh was 14 months old when he died in 2009, shaken and beaten by his father, a Navy diver, who was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The boy’s maternal grandmother sued the father and the state for wrongful death, asserting that the Department of Human Services failed to rescue the boy from a home it had documented as abusive and removed him from before.

A Circuit Court judge agreed, ruling in August 2013 that the state was negligent. DHS had removed the toddler from the home in 2008 after he suffered a traumatic arm fracture at the age of 5 weeks, but returned him to his parents, from foster care, six months later.

The judge found both the state and the father responsible for the death, and awarded the grandmother a total of about $384,000, about $250,000 to be paid by the father and $134,000 by the state.

The state appealed, contending that the grandmother failed to prove DHS should have anticipated the father’s criminal violence and that frequent in-person observations of the child by DHS workers, a Navy social worker and a doctor "did not create a basis for again removing" the child from his parents.

Now the Intermediate Court of Appeals has weighed in, dismantling the state’s assertions in stark terms. It affirmed the lower court’s ruling that DHS had failed to properly document the boy’s injuries and failed to disseminate crucial information to other child welfare professionals — inaccurate and sloppy record-keeping that rose to negligence and contributed to the child’s death.

"It is undisputed that the decedent fell within the class of children DHS is statutorily obligated to protect and that DHS had a duty to prevent further abuse to him," the appeals court stated in its ruling, which was handed down Dec. 30, 2014.

Lawyers in the state attorney general’s office are reviewing the decision while deciding whether to appeal the verdict to the state Supreme Court, as interest on the monetary award accrues. We hope they don’t appeal, and not because of the money; $134,000 is a pittance to pay for the life of a helpless child.

They shouldn’t appeal because continuing to insist that the DHS did nothing wrong when two court decisions so persuasively indicate otherwise could feed a mentality that DHS and its workers are being wronged.

And that could inhibit the much-needed and ongoing improvements in how the state responds to and follows up on cases of suspected child abuse.

This lawsuit was lost the day Brayden McVeigh died at the hands of a father who should not have been anywhere near him. The state should accept that hard lesson, and learn from it.